Cricalix.Net

A year or so ago, I came across a page on image manipulation using tools like Photoshop. Even when I look at that page now, with my cynical jaded eyes, I’m still amazed at how real-yet-fake a good image manipulator can make someone (or something) look. There are several more examples on that site of what can be done with photo manipulation.

What prompts this post? A discussion today at work that ranged from diets to diabetes to pictures of food on containers, and a memory of a documentary on how those cover graphics are done. Airbrushing, glazing, overcooking, application of a blowtorch, painting… the list goes on. In the end, the picture doesn’t look anything like the food inside, and manufacturers casually pass it off as ’serving suggestion’. Serving suggestion my arse - false advertising perhaps.

With the move to a 2 Mbit ADSL line, I decided to upgrade a few other components in my network. I’m now using a ZyXEL 660HW ADSL modem/router combination to provide my LAN with Internet access. Previously, I was using a SAR 110 router - it did a decent job, but was unable to handle multiple IP addresses. With the ZyXEL in place, I duly filled in a RIPE form and sent it to Force9’s support team. Less than 24 hours later, I had a shiny new /29 allocated to my network.
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I’m currently going through all of the web interface code for the $dayjob product, and validating it against the W3 XHTML validator (as all my pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict). I’ve been wondering for a while why IE has been rendering the pages in quirks mode, but it wasn’t until today that I found the link to the W3 article on XHTML declarations. Removing the ‘offending’ xml tag, and IE is now starting to render pages a bit more accurately. It still has bugs, but unfortunately I expect that. If it were up to me, I’d can all IE support on our site, but a major client uses nothing but IE, so I have to deal with the bundle of horse dung that is IE.

Our entire interface now validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict, and even 1.1 Strict, which is quite nice. Doubt my boss will want to show the icon anywhere, but it’s nice to know that a browser that understands the spec will hopefully render everything correctly. Also managed to squash a bug I didn’t know existed, which is also nice.

My parents and paternal grandparents came up this weekend to inspect the house. Best as I can tell, my grandparents approve - they also made some suggestions on how I can improve it for less than I was thinking of spending. I’m still undecided on changing the bath to a jacuzzi bath (assuming funds permit), but I’ll go talk to an estate agent to see what’s good for the market area I’m in. Took my grandparents and father over to the Wedgewood Visitor Centre - Gran enjoyed it thoroughly, but was quite suprised at how automated a lot of the production work is. All the base plates, cups etc are done by machine - industrial robots move pallets of items around, shape and clean dishes etc. The detail work though, is still done by humans - be it decals or custom paint decoration.

Mum did some work on my garden for me while I was playing tourguide, and I must say, it looks much better now. I’ve carried on the work, trimming the hedge and nuking quite a few weeds from orbit. Cleaned out a pile of weeds around the base of a jasmine plant on Monday, and by Tuesday afternoon it was flowering! Quite impressive. It’s raining now, so the newly dug beds should be getting a good soaking. Hopefully the strawberries will appreciate the rain too.

Part of the future plans for the house is to redo the garden a bit, and make it a combination of useful and pretty - adding more herbs and produce plants to the mix. Why pay the supermarket for basil etc when I can grow my own?